a very chewy recovery

this week, one of my good friends, a former roommate, had surgery and i couldnt be there to help her out with things since she is in denver and i am in jersey…so i made my best attempt at making her feel better from a distance– with cookies, of course! courtney and i used to be peanut butter, chocolate, and cookies fiends, so there was no choice but to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for her, but i wanted to try out a new recipe, mostly for your sake.  i mean, if i used one of my previous recipes i couldn’t post it, and you would be missing out on these amazing cookies!

i searched through some of my favorite baking blogs, recipe books, magazines, etc before settling in on one that i had added to my allrecipes recipe box a full year ago (two days off from being a year to the day, actually). the recipe didn’t look like anything too different or special, but recently i have been into experimenting with recipes that have ingredients i do not traditionally put in my cookies– for example, the various pudding cookies i have made. it was the corn syrup in this recipe that got me, though, and i thought that it might be what could help me produce the perfectly soft and chewy cookie. thankfully, i was right!

my goodness, so *this* is why you see corn syrup on the ingredient list of store bought cookies! i know, i know, all these sweeteners aren’t that great for you, but there are only two tablespoonfuls in the whole batch! the other thing that helped keep them extra soft and chewy is the 2:1 brown sugar to white sugar ratio, so if you aren’t a corn syrup fan, look for a recipe that has more more brown sugar than white and you should see great results! i usually use my cookie scoop, but when the recipe called for 1/4 of batter in each cookie, i took a look over at the paint can-style containers i had recently purchased, and thought that this would be a good opportunity to throw some big ol’ cookies in there and ship it out. i brought the cookies that didn’t fit into the container to work with me, and they got rave reviews! a got a few comments that they were quite large, but for some reason that didn’t stop them from polishing the cookie off in under a minute. i think that’s a good sign!

on a slightly related note, i was trying to book a trip to go see courtney this fall, and when i went in to get to the payment page, i sat there in disbelief when i received this message:

yeah, no. i will be planning a trip to see her for another time! it may be for the best anyway, since that weekend is the ridiculously crazy beerfest, which surely would make denver too crazy for my liking! i am not a huge fan of crowds, nor ridiculously drunk people, so a city full of a drunken crowd… not so appealing. in any case, here is the recipe, which makes approx 2 dozen large cookies:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chopped semisweet chocolate

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Fold in chocolate chunks. Drop by 1/4 cupfuls 3 inches apart onto ungreased baking sheets.
3. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden. Allow cookies to cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet before removing to wire racks to cool completely.